


Cupcakes After Quito

by adara



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Cameos by Erica Reyes and Kira Yukimura, Implied/Referenced Violence, Light Angst, M/M, Mentions of Blood, inception bingo 2018, inceptiversary, job gone wrong, missing and presumed dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-11 23:42:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15326994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adara/pseuds/adara
Summary: Arthur did not like the waiting. Something about this didn’t feel right and he couldn’t shake it. He wanted to reassure himself that Eames was competent, was safe— nobody could get the drop on Eames— but they obviously had.Or, the one in which Eames is missing and presumed dead following a job gone wrong and I throw shade at red velvet cupcakes.





	Cupcakes After Quito

**Author's Note:**

> Trope: Missing & Presumed Dead for my Inception Bingo Card.

Eames could handle himself. Arthur knew it. But going longer than 4 hours after a close call with no word wasn’t promising. Topping that off with the knowledge that Eames was working with a decidedly sketchier team than Arthur would have preferred and that the job was in an area of the small country with a ridiculously high rate of gun violence and homicide for the average tourist, let alone for someone in their line of work, the picture was not very pretty.

It was at the 8 hour mark when Arthur had to do something about the unsettling twist of his stomach. He ordered from Dominos, bless their website and their sprawling attempt at global domination, and entered in a burner number to call upon delivery in the additional instructions box. He may have been taking a note out of the book from that kid in the news a while back who’d used this tactic to check on his grandmother after a hurricane but it was surely effective. 

The order arrived, the call came, the panicked delivery guy relayed in rapidfire Spanish that the door was already open and he didn’t want to go in. Arthur promised him a huge tip and in he went. There was so much blood, he kept repeating. No bodies, but so much blood. 

“Cuanta sangre?” Arthur bit out. 

Based on the descriptions of the pooling sizes and spatter, there was at least a liter if not more. 

Shit. 

He sent the promised tip after hanging up and weighed his options. He could fly down, potentially compromising himself to find Eames perfectly safe and sound in his closest safehouse outside Quito, if he’d made it that far, laughing it off. Or he’d find an unsafe Eames who needed an extrication but couldn’t signal it. Or Eames was dead. Or he could wait, like they had always agreed was the plan, and stop catastrophizing like a 40’s housewife. 

Their agreement had always been contact briefly at dinner each night they were apart, partly to vent about the idiots they’d been saddled with for each particular job but also to reassure themselves that the other was ok. When things went south, their agreement had been to contact by 4 hours after a close call, pushed back to within 12 hours if compromised, within 2 weeks if it was a truly bad scene. They only truly trusted each other. They had to keep themselves and each other safe when they were working separate jobs. They never left a trail back to their small but well furnished (and well secured) flat in Paris, never left a trail that would compromise the other’s safety.  

So he waited.

He checked all of his e-mail accounts and phones religiously. He checked their appointed box at the bureau la poste twice daily and was starting to get strange looks from the gentleman who manned the desk. 

He knew better than to call. Surely the phone was now off or disposed of, but Arthur’s fingers itched to dial anyway. It had been two weeks since their last call- the call that ended abruptly with a soft grunt from Eames and the unarguable sound of a gun being discharged in close proximity. 

He did not like the waiting. Something about this didn’t feel right and he couldn’t shake it. He wanted to reassure himself that Eames was competent, was safe— nobody could get the drop on Eames— but they obviously had.

He had delayed flying out on his next job, pushed it back a week and fabricated a rationale as to why that worked better for the timeline that somehow the new team ate up. Perhaps the steel in his voice and the reputation he’d built in the field had something to do with their quick agreement but he didn’t waste a moment considering the possibilities. When they did jobs apart they tried to schedule at least a week in between before one or the other headed out again. They didn’t even need the money at this point but neither of them ever talked about stopping.

Eames would be back tonight. He had to be. They would have their week and after this next job they were due a proper vacation or at least a job they’d both be on site for. He watched the clock and refreshed his inboxes. Dinnertime would make it exactly two weeks. They’d gone longer without seeing each other but this was different. There was no word, even by way of a third party.

The bodies of the other members of the team had been found one by one over the last few days. Arthur was scouring all the local news, and the police blotter he’d gotten into, for any word. When the clock chimed midnight, Arthur raked a hand through his hair and pushed back from the desk.

He couldn’t sleep. He felt like he’d never been more alert to every small sound of their building, of his surroundings, in his entire life. He felt like if he listened hard enough, he’d hear the familiar sound of Eames footfalls on the stairs and down the hall, the blips of the keypad on the door, the creak of a floorboard.

He spent the next week alternating between meticulously planning the minutia of this next job with the now altered timeline and sipping far too much tea while staring into space, staring anywhere but at the several pieces of their apartment that were unique Eamesian touches. He wanted to fly to South America, to Equador— he flew to New York and caught the amtrak to Boston. With his sleek ensemble, he blended in perfectly with the sea of other collared individuals making the trip. He could’ve flown directly in to Boston but he did hate to be obvious in his trails.

He walked into the predetermined location for the job to find two of them already there. He was usually the first one on scene but they’d apparently felt no need to adjust their travel plans when the timeline adjusted and had spent the week doing ‘touristy shit’ according the to Austrian architect whose face clearly communicated how thoroughly he had not enjoyed being roped into that by their chemist. 

The others were chatting over takeout containers while Arthur set up in his work area. He wasn’t eavesdropping per se but a good pointman was always situationally aware. He had done his homework on the team so he didn’t bother feigning the need for introductions; they knew he didn’t need them.

“Did you hear about Yukimura and Eames?” 

The architect looked up at the blonde chemist who was digging dispassionately through her lo mein before she popped a prized shrimp in her mouth with a questioning hum in response to his question. 

Arthur tried not to visibly freeze. He’d heard nothing from his network, how the hell had this guy?

“Kira’s here, right? She hasn’t answered any of my texts all week but she prefers to keep her work on the clock so I get it,” she said before taking another bite. “She hates it when I try to drag her on my touristy to do list adventures.”

“Yeah she’s here. She happened to be at the foot of Cayambe for some horticultural thing before the job. The Marcos job there went south, started rounding up a body count according to my contact. They must have thought she was on their team because she was in the area and had been seen with Eames earlier in the day. They made the mistake of coming for her— and you know Kira. Heard she laid them all out, doubling their body count and ghosted with Eames presumed dead. She is a frighteningly competent and lethal little thing. I’d hate to cross her,” the man finished, continuing to poke around his own container.

“Don’t exaggerate Jürgen, it’s unbecoming.” Said a familiar voice from the doorway to Arthur’s right, sending a shiver down his spine that he fought to suppress. 

Ordinarily, Arthur would’ve chosen a workspace where all exits were visible and the safest one at a viable distance. Ordinarily, Arthur would have been aware of every aspect of what was going on around him. Ordinarily, Arthur was cool, calm and collected. Ordinarily, Arthur fared much better on weeks of very little rest. Ordinarily, Arthur wasn’t trying to play normal and remember how to breathe while his heart was beating out of his chest. 

He slowly looked up from the less than ideal workspace he’d been allotted and found Eames in all his terribly postured glory, leaning against the doorframe holding a paper cup in his hand. He looked a bit pale, definitely had some bruising peeking from his unbuttoned collar, and appeared to be favoring his left side. But he was here and breathing and Arthur flopped down in his desk chair unceremoniously.

“Eames,” Jürgen huffed out jovially, “only you would need to be literally extracted by our extractor and recruited for a job at the same time. Your luck, my friend, is unparalleled.” 

“Quite right.” He hummed in agreement, the hand in his pocket definitely feeling for his totem. 

He slowly made his way to where Arthur was seated and placed the tea in front of him like a peace offering. Tealuxe, of course. A good twenty minute uber from where they currently were but he couldn’t argue that it wasn’t his favorite.

The rest of the team carried on eating as Arthur took stock of the man in front of him and found his voice. “Where exactly is Yukimura? I talked to her a week ago and she was on target for starting. She didn’t seem very ghosted to me. As pointman, it’s my call if we need a forger— not the extractor’s.”

“Fifty bucks says she’s out with that redhead professor at MIT again. She wasn’t expecting you til later tonight per your last itinerary.” The blonde chemist threw in.

“Aaaaand I will be taking that fifty bucks, thanks. Should just about cover these babies.” Came another female voice from the same doorway Eames had just entered through, again unnoticed by Arthur until she entered. She set down a box of cupcakes with  _ SWEET _ emblazoned on the top and a drink carrier.  “Tea and cupcakes were dealer’s choice since I need to replace my phone, so first come first serve and no complaints.” 

“But is there red velvet?” The blonde crooned, handing over the cash and pulling the box close to her.

“Erica, I’m not a waitress. Be happy that I thought to share and didn’t sit on the library steps and eat them all. You know how much I love the Harvard Library. Besides, everyone with taste buds knows red velvet cake is mostly red food coloring and cupcakes should taste like cake not dye.”

“That is blasphemy, Kira.” The blonde chemist that Arthur had most referred to as ‘ex-pharmacist’ in his notes, because why bother using names on the relatively green when they may not be in dreamshare long, let out an affronted noise before opening the box and retrieved said cupcake and a mystery tea. “If you need a burner phone, I have two in the zipper pocket on my messenger bag. You can grab one.”

Maybe these ones would actually last. They seemed well prepared enough.

Arthur’s hand still rested on Eames’ on the proffered cup while looking to Kira and reiterated his earlier statement, he had an image to maintain after all.

“My job, my call. You may be the pointman Arthur but the client made some changes in the interim that required some groundwork. I know what she needs. I happened upon our esteemed forger in the process of the added background research, though our trip here was a bit more off the grid than I generally travel. Eames can perfectly sell this horticultural engineering and I need that level of flawlessness for my extraction to go as planned. Some things you can’t pass off with a deep google. He’s staying. I also don’t need any disgruntled gang members tailing us here and disrupting what is now going to be my smoothest op of the year.” Kira said, flinging her hair over her shoulder and draining half her cup of scalding tea without flinching. What a power move. She looked down at where Arthur’s hand still rested and quirked an eyebrow, “So if there’s no other commentary, let’s get this done and get home, yeah? It’s been a rough few weeks and we only just got in a bit ago ourselves.”

Erica and Jürgen were negotiating who got which of the remaining cupcakes, seemingly appeased with Kira’s plan and no-nonsense attitude.

“Dry run is set for the morning and we should be on target for Friday,” Arthur affirmed, pulling the tea cup out of Eames’ grasp and up to his lips. The warmth of the cup in his hand was comforting, pairing well with the knowledge that Eames had brought it for him, he was here and relatively ok. He checked him over thoroughly that night when they were back at their hotel, patiently kissed every bruise and re-dressed the still healing bullet wound. 

He’d never been more thankful to take a job with someone than he was about this Yukimura job. He didn’t want to think about what would have happened if she hadn’t been there. As expected, the job did end up being her smoothest op of the year and Eames did prove integral to selling the play for the extraction. She was definitely going on their list of preferred team members for future jobs after their vacation. 

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr at [9timesoutoften](https://9timesoutoften.tumblr.com/) where you can always reach out to me to talk Arthur & Eames
> 
> Kira & Erica were created by Jeff Davis. I don't own them, Teen Wolf, Arthur/Eames or anything Inceptiony. The Austrian OMC is mine.


End file.
